160 Sporting Sketches in Pen and Pencil. 



I think the joys of anticipation, and the talk over coming sport, make 

 up a large part of the pleasure of sport. Who does not rememher that 

 capital picture of Seymour's, where the old angler and tlie young one are 

 talking over their promised to-morrow, with the window wide open, and 

 the moonlight streaming down on the river. " You see that white cottage 

 in the moonlight," says the sage; "just there I've hooked many a trout 

 of 21h. ; down by those poplars are some capital chub holes, and in the 

 middle deeps of a morning the great barbel lay rolling in the sunshine 

 like so many beer barrels." It is wonderfully true to nature, and so 

 we talked it all over, and Rag propounded all about cottages, poplars, 

 and middle deep, to admiration, till a late hour. 



Breakfast was over, and Old Mike was waiting with Dirke, the dog. 



Mike was a sort of lusus naturce in point of ugliness and general 

 dislocatedness. He was all knobs apparently in the wrong place, and his 

 limbs hung about him in a loose disjointed sort of way as if they didn't 

 belong to him. He had three likes — tobacco, beer, and whisky — but I never 

 saw him drunk. He mumbled to himself and grunted as he walked, and 

 it was the oddest thing to pick up scraps of one of his moaning murmurings. 

 " Ducks in the reeds ! — ducks, ducks, in reeds — how the d — 1 can there 

 be ducks in the reeds ? Hoof, hoof. When that 'ere Tom Tidy went 

 a sloppin' all down t'other side this morning at four — ducks in the 

 reeds ! Hoof, not a moorhen, not a coot, lay my life — hoof." He was 

 generally right in his views of sport, however. 



Sandwiches and a most portentous flask, which held about three pints 

 of Glenlivat, were provided ; and, shouldering our doubles, while Mike 

 handled a long single ducker, with a muzzle you might shove an egg 

 down— that is, a small one ! — we proceeded down the road, and across 

 a field into another field, over a plank bridge, and into the water 

 meadows. There had been light snow, which still laid here and there, 

 and a smart white frost had covered the twigs and brambles with rime, 

 but the river had been out over the banks, and there was plenty 

 of squash along the edges of the carriers and drawns* in the water 

 meadows. We each walked down one of these towards the river, with 



* The larger and smaller water courses used in irrigating water meadows. 



